Posted on 05/18/2002 10:31:35 AM PDT by GeneD
WASHINGTON, May 18 — American intelligence agencies have intercepted a vague yet troubling series of communications among Al Qaeda operatives over the last few months indicating that the terrorist organization is trying to carry out an operation as big as or bigger than the Sept. 11 attacks, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.
But just as last summer's threats left counterterrorism analysts guessing about Al Qaeda's intentions, and believing that the attack might be carried out overseas, the new interceptions are so general that they have left President Bush and his counterterrorism team in the dark about the time, place or method of what some officials refer to as a second-wave attack. As a result, the government is essentially limited to taking broad defensive measures.
"It's again not specific — not specific as to time, not specific as to place," one senior administration official said.
The officials compared the intercepted messages, which they described as cryptic and ambiguous, to the pattern of those picked up last spring and early summer, when Qaeda operatives were also overheard talking about a big operation. Those signals were among the evidence that intelligence agencies presented to President Bush in August about the possibility of an imminent attack against the United States.
The senior official said Friday that the amount of intelligence relating to another possible attack, in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula or the United States, had increased in the last month. Some of it comes from interviews with fighters captured in Afghanistan.
But despite the disruption of Al Qaeda's operations around the world since Sept. 11, and despite major spending increases and shifts of resources to counterterrorism operations, American officials say they have not been able to fully piece together the clues about Al Qaeda's plans.
"There's just a lot of chatter in the system again," the official said. "We are actively pursuing it and trying to see what's going on here."
The government's frustration underscores the problem in fighting an unconventional foe like Al Qaeda.
Interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials suggest that in the eight months since Sept. 11 the government has made only limited progress in its ability to predict Al Qaeda's next move, and that many proposed improvements in counterterrorism operations have yet to be put into effect.
This is despite considerable advantages that the United States lacked a year ago. The war in Afghanistan has provided a wealth of new information about Al Qaeda's structure and organization, for example.
In addition, the United States is also interrogating captured Qaeda fighters about the organization's plans. Officials say that debriefings of detainees have in some instances provided general warnings of another major attack that dovetail with the threats picked up in the intercepted communication traffic.
Facing intense criticism in recent days over disclosures that a series of possible clues about Al Qaeda's plans fell through the cracks in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say that some significant changes have been made in the way threat information is studied and circulated within the upper reaches of the Bush administration.
For the first time, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. now compare notes on all terrorist threat information that comes in each day, filtering the intelligence through what they call an analytical "matrix" to determine which threats are the most credible and deserve the most attention. Their daily threat report is distributed to senior policy makers, including the White House director of homeland security, Tom Ridge. It provides a structure for debates among senior officials about whether to issue public threat warnings.
President Bush also now receives daily briefings from both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, are frequently present during those White House sessions. That way, each agency is able to hear the other's latest advice to the president. Before Sept. 11, he received a daily briefing only from the C.I.A.
Although officials say some potential attacks have been foiled, that has been largely credited to the arrest of terrorist operatives overseas by foreign governments rather than to intelligence gleaned from intercepted communications.
United States intelligence officials said that they began to intercept communications among Qaeda operatives discussing a second major attack in October, and that they have detected recurring talk among them about another attack ever since. Some of the intercepted communications have included frightening references to attacks that the Qaeda operatives say would cause vast numbers of American casualties.
The intercepted communications don't point to any detailed plans for an attack, and even the messages mentioning mass casualties don't refer specifically to the use of weapons of mass destruction like chemical, biological or nuclear devices.
Still, American officials say they believe the intercepts represent some of the most credible intelligence they have received since Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda's intentions. They have provided a troubling undercurrent for the Bush administration as it tries to sort through the hundreds of other terrorist threat warnings it has received over the past few months.
The pattern of intercepted communications that began last October has helped prompt at least five public threat alerts issued by the F.B.I. since last fall.
By contrast, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials say they have been skeptical of many of the far more specific threats they have received from individual informants over the past few months. One of the problems now facing American counterterrorism experts is that they say communications intercepts, while vaguely worded, are often highly credible threat warnings, while the very detailed and specific threats passed on by individual informants are often far less reliable.
Individual informants who approach American investigators in the United States or overseas often know what kind of story will get the biggest reaction. They also often come forward because of hidden motives, perhaps hoping for money or entrance into the United States. The C.I.A. routinely gives its informants polygraph tests in an effort to validate their stories.
But officials say that in some cases they have been forced to take tales told by informants more seriously than they otherwise might, at least in part because officials suspect from the intercepted communications that Al Qaeda is planning something big.
In recent months, officials have issued threat alerts regarding nuclear plants, financial institutions and even specific structures like the Seattle Space Needle and the Golden Gate Bridge, even as some counterterrorism experts privately regarded those threats as not based on solid intelligence.
Some officials say the government's new color-coded threat alert system is less useful than the system it replaced, because it is subject to political influences from appointees who are fearful of being criticized if they fail to pass on every possible threat, no matter how remote.
Yet even as the less credible threats have been widely publicized, the more worrisome and credible undercurrent of intercepted communications has not been made public.
In hindsight, analysts now view the pattern of intercepted communications they saw last May, June and July as a sign of the impending attacks. Those intercepts, coming after embassy bombings in Africa and the suicidal bombing of a Navy ship in an Arabian port, were sometimes alarming.
Their references to mass attacks against American interests prompted a series of public alerts against possible terrorist attacks last summer, including one concerning a possible strike over the Fourth of July holiday. Officials said that they never had any evidence that an attack would occur inside the United States, and instead focused most of their attention on possible strikes against American facilities in the Middle East, Europe or Asia.
After the summer holiday passed quietly without any attacks, American analysts were relieved, but still believed that an attack might be coming. However, they lacked any further details of where or when the strike might come, and some officials began to think that the immediate danger might have passed. Now that analysts are seeing a similar pattern of communications intercepts, they say they are determined to avoid a repeat of that mistake.
When someone applies one of the attributes of God, that of omniscience, to a mere human being, they are either being blasphemous, incredibly foolish, or leveling an insult. I don't know of any other thoughts that could be behind such a statement.
I don't see you as a foolish person.
Yep(i, ii or iii)!
You just can't allow yourself to ask anyone anything? Does it make you feel less of a person to do so?
Don't be afraid to ask instead of making assumptions. That would have avoided all the misunderstandngs on this thread, not to mention one that has begun from your latest assumption.
I didn't. You clearly aren't...as we've both said. It would be impossible, unless you are God.
This statement of yours from post #213: You projected your omniscience onto my post to ascertain a meaning other than what is typed.", resembles, to me, an assignment of the attribute of omniscience to my person. Please explain what you really intended by this statement, and why your wording differed from your meaning.
I am actually not sure what you meant, but on another thread a few days ago someone pointed out that one of the calendar months on that islamic calendar had hot air balloons floating over a disaster. And this was in response to a post in the thread with a link to photos of Al Qaeda training manuals - one page had some hot air balloons.
It just struck me that this was a pretty good idea. Most of us see hot air balloons and think they are pretty.
I did a search on FR for cyanide and found it interesting. I recall the one sentence from the terrorist, something like "I need a large amount of cyanide".
It didn't seem to me to be a credible concern until I did the search, which made me think they like cyanide and are focused on it, and well, if they did a good job it would kill a lot of people very very quickly.
LOL. I spent a few hours watching video the other day on muslim websites, videos of them blowing up things in other countries. They did love to go after those power stations.
Would it really take years to rebuild? I think you have a good thought here. Thinking back again to those videos I watched, they mostly targeted power supplies, bridges and some kind of official buildings, military stuff.
I think it's nix on the Indy or sports stuff. I think they want to destroy our transportation and power grid. Originally I was thinking they would try to blow up a lot of bridges all over the country at a similar time. Remember that the 9-11 attack was meant to be larger and more involved. I think they like to do damage in many places at once.
And I still think that rental truck on Whidbey Island was a farce. Deception Pass Bridge is a critical connection between two countries and was one of the photos they found in Afghanistan.
We freepers need to brainstorm together with everything we have. Someone start a brainstorm thread...
I suppose this comes from writing numerous articles and letters for the local fishwrap and a few magazine articles. Those readers cannot ask me: "what did you mean by that?" I have to be as clear and concise as I possibly can, so that when those readers draw their conclusions concerning my meaning, there can be only one meaning; that being the one I intended to convey. If I don't do this, the article will end up in the editor's wastebasket. This is not an excuse for making assumptions, however. I stopped addressing the issue of my making incorrect assumptions, when I began trying to show you "why" I arrived at the conclusion I did. I suppose it is unrealistic of me to think that others should follow such rules. The downside is that I am expecting them to. That is why I did not question your comments. I took what you wrote at face value, within the context inwhich you presented it, and responded with sarcasm.
To answer an earlier question, no, I don't hate people, but, as I said earlier, I don't play well with others, either.
That should read: careful to say what we mean to say, not making ..., I think.
Forget the baseball games and Indy 500. Think what they could accomplish by going after bridges that are critical, as Deception Pass is, to the local military base, or critical to interstate travel. Add in some reservoirs with cyanide dumped into them, and then blow up some power stations.
Now that would be a major attack, if they could pull it off. If there are enough of them here.
I think what they want to do is cripple this country, not kill a huge amount of people.
Well, see, on FR we have dialogue, not monologues. It's part of what makes newspaper useless... no chance to interact, no chance for clarification, no chance for anything except what the author asserts. I presume your experience at making unchallenged assertions is part of your problem here.
They want to shock and scare us.
We need to be watchful..and prepared..I intend to buy a generator next week..It has been on a long list of wants for a while..I intend to buy one that will give me light and refrigation and radio.They are smart to have as an emergency back up anyway....we need to be Y2K ready all the time..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.